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Are we paying DISH to be their test department? Frustrated with Hopper/Joey problems

I've come to the conclusion that DISH doesn't test any of their software before releasing it.

I've had the Hopper/Joey set up for a few weeks now and am fed up with the problems. I'm on software 2.09 and it's still glitchy. Some of the problems I've experienced and still experience:

1. If the Hopper is in standby and someone is watching a Joey, when the Hopper gets turned on it does the switch check which takes the Joeys down and dumps all buffers. Who came up with that design?

2. Hopper freezes/glitches which takes out the Joeys (and the buffers, natch).

3. Joey gets turned on, comes up in a frozen mode, can't do anything. Sometimes pressing the red button and selecting something that's on in another room wakes it up, sometimes not.

4. Hopper simply freezes up when you leave live TV paused for more than few minutes. I've found that sometimes I can go to a Joey and tell it to watch what's on the Hopper, which wakes the Hopper up.

5. Watching a recorded show tonight, at the end I selected DELETE and the Hopper responded by freezing, then rebooting itself. Naturally that takes out all the Joeys as well.

It's not like I'm doing anything unusual, or even have to use the system for very long to hit these problems. I could go on but it's pretty clear that DISH believes that its paying customers are its test department.

Based on my background as a software designer/tester, I can tell you that anything that is that complex and a new design will have a lot of bugs. There is simply no feasible way for the design to be tested enough to find them all before release. This is true with all tech devices. If one wants to own new designs soon after release, this is the price you pay. If you want a mostly debugged product, wait a year or so after release.

I've come to the conclusion that DISH doesn't test any of their software before releasing it.

I've had the Hopper/Joey set up for a few weeks now and am fed up with the problems. I'm on software 2.09 and it's still glitchy. Some of the problems I've experienced and still experience:

1. If the Hopper is in standby and someone is watching a Joey, when the Hopper gets turned on it does the switch check which takes the Joeys down and dumps all buffers. Who came up with that design?

2. Hopper freezes/glitches which takes out the Joeys (and the buffers, natch).

3. Joey gets turned on, comes up in a frozen mode, can't do anything. Sometimes pressing the red button and selecting something that's on in another room wakes it up, sometimes not.

4. Hopper simply freezes up when you leave live TV paused for more than few minutes. I've found that sometimes I can go to a Joey and tell it to watch what's on the Hopper, which wakes the Hopper up.

5. Watching a recorded show tonight, at the end I selected DELETE and the Hopper responded by freezing, then rebooting itself. Naturally that takes out all the Joeys as well.

It's not like I'm doing anything unusual, or even have to use the system for very long to hit these problems. I could go on but it's pretty clear that DISH believes that its paying customers are its test department.

Serious qusetion: is DIRECT's gear as glitchy and buggy as DISH's?

None of this is normal behavior. Not to be That Guy, but have you even called Dish yet? It shouldn't be doing a Check Switch every time it wakes up, and certainly shouldn't be freezing.

Ask for help, call, chat or message one of the DIRT folks on here. They'll get your Hopper replaced.

"Belligerent and numerous."

SlingTV, Tablo and Plex to Roku 3s and Chromecasts on a Vizio 42" in the living room and a Toshiba 32" in my bedroom. Xbox 360 client on a Westinghouse 42" in the game room. Tablets EVERYWHERE!

Based on my background as a software designer/tester, I can tell you that anything that is that complex and a new design will have a lot of bugs. There is simply no feasible way for the design to be tested enough to find them all before release. This is true with all tech devices. If one wants to own new designs soon after release, this is the price you pay. If you want a mostly debugged product, wait a year or so after release.

I wouldn't be surprised if you did work for the company. Good, no ... PERFECT match !

Compared to the vip922 the Hopper/Joey system is a walk in the park. Is it perfect? no, will it be? probably not, that said it has solved many of the wants posters here and elsewhere have been asking for. I like the Hopper, I wish the EHD stuff would get worked out.... but I'm a inpatient type.
They'll be another system in a year or two for the "masochist and tech types" to rail and or drool over...can't wait.

I have seen a lot of the same issues as you have. I was on the phone tonight with tech support complain of multiple times were I saw video freeze up and I had to reset the hopper. While I had the technician on the phone the Hopper froze up again and all he said was call back when I didn't have any recording going on.

What fun. Nightly resets and an agrivated wife.

The lockup this evening I had Prime time anytime running and 2 other programs recording and my hopper kept getting more and more sluggish in the menus until the video playback froze on the Joey my wife was watching. I tried to go into a recording and couldn't until I reset the Hopper.

I'm sorry but I had an HR24 dvr from directv that I remember only a couple hard resets in 2 years

I wouldn't be surprised if you did work for the company. Good, no ... PERFECT match !

No, I did not ever work for DISH.... I got all my software experience with IBM coding the big mainframe systems.... Trust me, there is no software existing that does not have some bugs in it that will show up eventually given some unique conditions. The newer the software, the more bugs in it.

Having just recently switched from DirecTV to Dish, I can tell you that in my experiences the Hopper/Joey system is far superior.I have had the Dish system for over a month and I have had only one incident wherein I had to reset the primary receiver. It has otherwise been trouble-free. It has also been vastly more responsive than my DirecTV DVR was. That thing was like using a 14.4 modem on today's Internet.

Sounds like you have a bad hopper. I have two hoppers, 3 joey's and not a single lockup, missed recording, shutdown, reboot on anything since installation over four weeks ago. Anyone having these issues regularly should get the afflicted hopper replaced.